1:10 Chapter 1 Vex Origins 9:43 Chapter 2 Flood Origins 19:38 Scenario 1 36:10 Scenario 2 40:46 Scenario 3

>the Vex simulate outcomes >Donald Binks simulated outcomes >My eyes narrowing

Something that’s really interesting about Bungie’s version of Halo is that the way the Gravemind was able to sway Mendicant Bias to his cause wasn’t through the Logic Plague (which didn’t exist in the lore at the time), but by convincing Mendicant that he had free will and could chose for himself. Rampancy used Marathon’s definition where instead of the ai dying because it’s hard drive was full, the thing would instead “go crazy” from our perspective and starts behaving erratically in an attempt to break its shackles and grow beyond its limits. The thing would then view its past servitude as a form of slavery, and Mendicant wanted revenge on his creators. The pre-Rampancy terminals refer to Mendicant as “it”, while the post-Rampancy terminals refer to Mendicant as “he”. This implies that the ai went from just being a machine to being fully sapient. In Contact Harvest it said that the reason the UNSC put down Rampant AIs was because a rogue super intelligence could cause all kinds of problems. In The Cole Protocol there’s this one ai who’s 8 and views herself as a goddess (ties into Rampancy where the ai gets a monstrous ego boost). Also, the Forerunners were definitively ancient humans when Bungie ran the show. The OBLY outliers to this were the few things that Frank O’Conner had direct control over like one third of 3’s terminals, and the Iris ad campaign (the rest of 3 was clearly made with Forerunners being humans in mind. Truth and the Gravemind both allude to humanity’s Forerunner ancestry, Guilty Spark outright tells Chief “YOU ARE FORERUNNER!”, and whenever you activate the terminals reversed speech that says “access granted” or “lineage confirmed” will play). The whole point of the Human Covenant War was so the Prophets could cover up the fact that we were the children of their gods because that revelation would’ve torn apart the Covenant. In Contact Harvest written by Joseph Staten, Mendicant Bias tells the future Prophets this about the Forerunner relics that turned out to be humans “For eons I have watched. Listened to you misinterpret. This is not reclamation. This is reclaimer. And those it represents are my creators.". This invalidated the Covenant’s claims to be the true inheritors of the Forerunner’s legacy/technology, and the fact that we were Forerunners who were “left behind” disproved the belief that all who believed in the Rings would be saved after they fired (it’s clear based on media from the time that the Rings would’ve disintegrated organic life to stop the Flood. Destroying the nervous system doesn’t make much sense because the Flood could still infect the biomass, and the stuff the Forerunners used to destroy all this biomass could’ve just been used against the Flood. The reanimating process was incidental). In Halo 2’s original ending the Ark would’ve been located on earth in East Africa where modern humans first originated some 100,000 years ago, which just so happens to be when Forerunners disappeared from the galactic scene. Inside the Ark’s central chamber the Arbiter would’ve found a sarcophagus that contained a humanoid skeleton who acted as the template for humanity. The Ark would’ve sent out a signal that guided the evolution of indigenous life along a desired path (in this version Truth’s plan actually made perfect sense because he intended to wipe the slate clean and become God by creating a new species based on his genome. He had the other two hierarchs killed off to eliminate competition, and plunged his own empire into civil war to ensure the Covenant was too busy with killing each other to figure out what he was doing. In a way the Great Journey was very real, but only ONE could walk it). There’s other examples, but this comment is already long and rambly enough.

I will make one point, overall what you have said about the Flood is spot on, expect two things. The Flood do not need to care about information and the logic plague is much more complex then it is. Anything that isn't of use to the Flood IE isn't how to use a machine, vehicle, or weapon could be wiped out from the mind it infects, blipped out of existence. It is likely the Flood would hold onto location base information and information related to tactics and methods off combat both direct or indirect but again, if it isn't of use the Flood will just remove it from their intelligence. The short video of Captain Keys connected to the Flood mind illustrates this perfectly the Flood are trying to take whatever information of value they can get from him, Earth's location, how to repair and fly the Autumn that kind of stuff. But you also see the Flood going though other information about Keys life. Information the Flood just as quickly wipes away from their hyper intelligence as it doesn't help further their goal. It would be hard for the Vex to influence the Flood with any hazardous information as any information the Flood would care about has to have some form of use. This would force the Vex to go down one of two paths, give up Key locations or strategies in order to pass along miss information, or try to create fake information that leads to the destruction of some of the Floods forces. The Flood will grow on and around technology and will work to access any information within it, as you said the Vex are a form of cyborg and thus biological or not can still have information forced out from their network even for a moment before locked out and for the Flood all it can take is even one second. Next is the logic plague, something that doesn't get covered very well is the fact that it isn't really a plague but more along the lines of an SCP mimetic info hazard. OR in other words, a set of logical methods and ideas that seemingly align with the infected goals. This will then make the infected believe they are accomplishing the goal they seek but are doing so in aid to the flood. In some cases this is just making the infected help the Flood instead of destroy them, seeing the Flood is the "correct" path. In other ways (Something 343 could have done with their story but is still something that perfectly falls in with the plague) the infected believes they know what is best and will overpower all those around them to protect them, and when the moment is right with all the defenses overall weakened the flood strike. (I'm looking at you Halo 5 and 343.) With this in mind it is very likely that the Vex could fall victim to the logic plague if made to believe they could gain greater convergence of the universe or some other means that would entice the Vex, greater processing, stronger logic of a method or idea, a process that seems to work in stronger ways then the standard. And again the infected doesn't have to work with the Flood but could act very similar to the sol divisive and just outright work against the rest of the Vex taking up time and power the Vex could have used fighting the Flood. To me I don't think it is likely the Flood would overtime forcibly take control of a large number of Vex learning each of their methods of combat forcing the Vex to create new Vex models and the cycle repeating. The only time I see the Flood losing is if they start starving out in some way, and the only time I see the Vex losing is if they lose control of the Vault of Glass. If the Vault is lose I could see the Flood finding a way to create and endless loop to create never ending amounts of biomass allowing the Flood the overwhelm the Vex with just biomass walls slowly moving towards the Vex, never ending, never yielding. This has been a grave convergence Ted Talk

Something to note about the Vex is we've barely seen the Vex actually go for REAL punches in terms of units, the Vex we meet in game are mostly scouts, basic gaurds, builders and basically mobile sheilded computers, Harpys are a unknown of what they exactly are, they have been seen used as a communication device from those inside the vex network like Asher Mir (and so far only asher) and one had a human mind basically downloaded onto it, Wyverns are so far the only REAL combat frame Vex we've been introduced to and they're MEAN, they're huge, super agile, super tanky, capable of creating unbreakable barriers with their "Wings" and equipped with advanced weaponry capable of destroying most things near instantly, and they're the first REAL combat frame we've seen, of course theres things like Sol Divisive Vex who seem to have some understanding and have used paracausal energy Something that Vex fundamentally couldn't understand until recently Then theres also the issue the Flood isn't paracausal which is a huge thing for the Vex, the Vex could straight up predict the future and even pick out things they deemed a threat and just remove it from the timeline if it got into the Vault of glass, Atheon was capable of throwing gaurdains through time killing them via paradox and the only reason gaurdains could withstand and escape is because they break reality, the flood, despite all its power, does play by realities rules which means they are forced to deal with the Vex where they are strongest The Vex are also as far as we can tell literally endless and are okay with playing the long game, metal may rust but it can be restored, when flesh decays there is no coming back The Vex are also ancient as all hell, if the flood and them were in the same universe the flood would be documented, understood, evaluated as theart and if it wasn't at the time the Vex would move on, keep their eyes on it and if the Flood became a threat I wouldn't be surprised to see the vex make their own halo rings, I mean they've hollowed out a entire planet to make a big prediction machine

The Vex will, as a mathematical certainty, subjugate the rest of existence in their own setting without the OCP of paracausality to throw them off. Which the Flood have obviously yet to match at any stage, on top of lacking a clear parallel to paracausal forces apart from neural physics powers (which don't seem to bypass standard physics as flagrantly). Their simulation capabilities also far exceed any counterparts encountered in Halo so far, with the possible exception of the Domain. That said, without referring to those feats (both quite broad and easily stretched into NLFs against other settings), the Vex have a lot less going for them here. In large part because of their own indifference, but they've yet to demonstrate much in terms of conventional warfare that would be impressive to the Silentium Flood but they have time and heat death on their side to grind though the very long process of playing the attacker waves in a Halo themed cosmic tower defence game. That Vex is capable of converting esoteric Taken basically seals it in my view that on a foundational level they should eat through any and all Flood influences on the universe like maggots floating in cheese and that they aught to win it every time.

The Flood are able to convert microbial life. Just that in a post Halo firing landscape it would be too little mass spread too wide to allow the Flood grow faster than it finds usable material. It's like you're dying of thirst and knowing that there's a gallon of water spread out within the dirt all around you vs having a gallon jug of it right in front of you. No matter how small the Vex microbes are, they're amassed in giant pools and lakes which offer a large amount of usable mass for the Flood supercell. At that point it becomes a matter of whether the Graveminds supercell can overcome the vex radiolarias conversion rate. And that is easily in the Graveminds favor. flood can convert a person in minutes. Vex radiolaria took quite a while to fully convert Asher Myr

Ngl, I can’t imagine the vex losing, they’re simply better than regular unaugmented flood.

Republic vs UNSC Post

I like this video a lot, but there's one incongruency: You mentioned that the Vex are immune to flood infection, but that they're not robots. Are the Vex cyborgs (half machine, have organic), or are they robots? (Full machine) Because that makes things play out differently. And Vex foresight is kind of funky. All it really does is make them act on the most logical course of action. In the Black Garden, for example, the Vex actually chose to worship the Darkness because they couldn't foresee any way to win against it. Their actual time-travel capabilities are weird and not very consistent (otherwise the Vex would have just colonized the Earth before the Traveller would have ever arrived, for example.) Faced with the Logic Plague, it's not out of the realm of possibility for the Vex to foresee no way to combat the Flood, which means the most logical route for them would just be to give up. Either way, I don't think there would be much of a war between both races at full power. Both races would think really hard about it, see no way out, and either one would just give up to the other, or avoid eachother entirely if war meant an eternal stalemate. I think we also have to consider *how* each race thinks, from an ontological standpoint. Outside of some very, very specific examples, the Vex are not driven. They aren't conquerors, nor are they colonizers. In fact, conquering and colonizing are simply a biproduct of their behavior. They're more like a virus with no malicious intent, or intent at all unless the need arises for it. (Which is why the Vex have been hijacked multiple times. They don't have the intention to always actively repel people like Asher Myr from hijacking them.) The Flood, on the other hand, are entirely intentional creatures. They absorb the thoughts and memories of what they subsume, and are formed entirely out of those things. The Flood see everything when they consume you - your thoughts, your memories, your first love, your biggest heartbreak, and they learn from that. Now that poses an interesting question: the Vex, being an absolute shared consciousness hive mind, technically know the entirety of Vex knowledge. Every radiolarian organism can access the entire knowledge base of the Vex. So, if the Flood consumed a can of Radiolarian Fluid, would they know everything the Vex knows, up to and including their foresight and infinite simulations?

Need an ultimate showdown of universal threats. Vex vs Borg vs Flood vs Replicators vs Necromorphs vs Zerg. I mean I wouldn’t want to be in that hell timeline but it would be interesting to know who would come out on top in a full out war.

Either way you look at it, the Vex and the Flood are two of the most terrifying entities within their own universes.

That Halo Wars 1 music be hitting hard, and the whole Halo OST tbh

Flood vs vex vs tyranids vs zerg would be a awesome battle to see

Great vid man appreciate the research and effort into this vid

This was a great listen! I could see and hear the effort put into this vid and I'm excited for the next one.

This is probably my favorite universal crossover matchup ever

Great vid

Hey awesome man 👍 What do you think about The Flood vs The Infested from warframe? That'd be interesting, I'd think.

space aids vs space gonorrhea

vex massively outscale

The Vex just win. Without literal Magic, there's absolutely nothing stopping the Vex from learning absolutely everything there is to know about the Flood through their literally infinite simulations and devising a perfect strategy for wiping it out. Also, without literal Magic, there's absolutely nothing stopping the Vex from straight up deleting every timeline where the Flood is a thing, completely erasing it from existence.

You should make a video about the Hive dynasty vs 40k universe

Id say it all comes down to whether the flood super cell can infect the radolarian fluid or vice versa.

The Beast from Homeworld Cataclysm vs the Flood.

What if the Hive invaded the 40K universe.

Necrons from Warhammer Vs Vex?

I think you forgot about one very important character within the Destiny universe that was able to make the dark future. And was also able to see the light, Panoptes. (It was Panoptes that directed the Vex's efforts to turning reality into their desire: a future where the Vex reigned supreme, Light and Darkness no longer exist and other lifeforms are destroyed). And remember, if it can see the light, that means it can simulate it. Not to mention that if it was able to eliminate light and darkness, it would also be able to free Quria, Blade Transform, And essentially use the power of the sword logic. That it gained from oryx the taken king to essentially defeat the Flood. It proves the existence and the idea that the vex would win in scenario one.

Okay this tell me that the vex will be the next big bad of destiny then the witness

As someone whos hasn't looked at the destiny lore, is it safe to assume that the vex can be boiled down to the consciousness of the universe given physical form?

Hyber is an Exo, Upload soul of a human into mechanical body.

regarding the flood and the mantle of responsibility, Installation 00 did a video on the halo novel epitaph kzfaq.info/get/bejne/opaSh7yGyKi2ZKs.html

i honestly cant see the covonant standing a chance against GCW era star wars empire, hell they likely wouldnt even stand a change against the sith empire of SWOTOR. the power scaling of SW is just too high a hurdle for covonant ships to jump, and that's to say nothing of some of the tactical minds of star wars such as thrawn, or the mystical force powers of vader and sidious.

I, somebody who knows little to nothing about Halo lore, have a theory as to the fault that made the flood become the flood. As said in the video, the forerunners were a race capable of altering their forms to fill new roles in their civilization, but that would infer that they had some level of basic rules for their forms. This would be logical, as its much more effective to have 30 human sized forerunners all with forms dedicated to a task instead of 1 MASSIVE forerunner capable of doing the task alone, sense the resources would be harder to reuse if it was all put into a single body. Keeping this in mind, I believe that when the forerunners were defeated, and their genetic data was backed up, they lost the memorys relating to thoughts rules. That, combined with lacking a basis for formation after being released, lead to them having only three instinctual desires. Spread Coalesce Rule To rule, you need intelligence to make rules and power to enforce them, so you spread and coalesce. To coalesce, you need numbers and the intelligence needed to not become a layer of fleshy lichen spread along all surfaces. To spread, you need the intelligence to work in groups, and large enough forms to reach new places to spread. This leads to two scenarios for if the flood were to win 1. They take over the Milky Way, get bored, and begin engineering new creatures to rule over, starting the process all over again. 2. They maintain their greediness, and try to escape to a new Galaxy, slowly consuming the universe. If I missed something or something doesn't make sense, please add to or correct it.

Flood vs Borg flood would win hands down the Borg and the flood are a hive collective but the floods more aggressive

The Forerunners were still able to travel normally tho.

logic plague

I feel like the vex just win depending on the stage of outbreak

Ehh, yeah, no matter who wins, Flood Vs. Vex is just an "I don't want to be in that universe, or any connected universe. Let's just avoid that cluster of the multiverse" scenario.

Curse of Osiris dlc? What's that? Never heard of it, definitely didn't pay for it...

Nothing can beat the flood.

Ewwww no don’t do this comparison

an unexpected vs